Heard at conventicle, where worthy men, Misled by custom, strain celestial themes Through the prest nostril, spectacle-bestrid. Some, decent in demeanour while they preach, That task perform'd, relapse into themselves; And, having spoken wisely, at the close Grow wanton, and give proof to ev'ry eye- Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not! Forth comes the pocket mirror.-First we stroke An eye-brow; next, compose a straggling lock; Then with an air, most gracefully perform'd, Fall back into our seat, extend an arm, And lay it at its ease with gentle care, With handkerchief in hand depending low: The better hand, more busy, gives the nose Its bergamot, or aids th' indebted eye With op'ra glass, to watch the moving scene, And recognize the slow-retiring fair.— Now this is fulsome, and offends me more Than in a churchman slovenly neglect
And rustic coarseness would. An heav'nly mind
May be indiff'rent to her house of clay, And slight the hovel as beneath her care; But how a body so fantastic, trim,
And quaint, in its deportment and attire, Can lodge an heav'nly mind-demands a doubt.
He that negociates between God and man, As God's ambassador, the grand concerns Of judgment and of mercy, should beware Of lightness in his speech. "Tis pitiful
To court a grin, when you should woo a soul; To break a jest, when pity would inspire Pathetic exhortation; and t' address
The skittish fancy with facetious tales,
When sent with God's commission to the heart! So did not Paul. Direct me to a quip Or merry turn in all he ever wrote, And I consent you take it for your text, Your only one, till sides and benches fail
REGULAR OPERATIONS OF NATURE
WHAT prodigies can pow'r divine perform More grand than it produces year by year, And all in sight of inattentive man? Familiar with th' effect we slight the cause, And, in the constancy of nature's course, The regular return of genial months, And renovation of a faded world,
See nought to wonder at. Should God again, As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race Of the undeviating and punctual sun,
How would the world admire! but speaks it less An agency divine, to make him know
His moment when to sink and when to rise,
Age after age, than to arrest his course? All we behold his miracle; but, seen So duly, all is miracle in vain.
Some say that, in the origin of things, When all creation started into birth,
The infant elements receiv'd a law,
From which they swerve not since. That under force Of that controuling ordinance they move,
And need not his immediate hand, who first Prescrib'd their course, to regulate it now.
Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God Th' incumbrance of his own concerns, and spare The great Artificer of all that moves, The stress of a continual act, the pain Of unremitted viligence and care, As too laborious and severe a task. So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems, To span omnipotence, and measure might, That knows no measure, by the scanty rule And standard of his own, that is to-day, And is not ere to-morrow's sun go down! But how should matter occupy a charge Dull as it is, and satisfy a law
So vast in its demands, unless impell'd To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force, And under pressure of some conscious cause? The Lord of all, himself through all diffus'd,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. He feeds the secret fire By which the mighty process is maintain'd, Who sleeps not, is not weary; in whose sight Slow-circling ages are as transient days; Whose work is without labour; whose designs No flaw deforms, no difficulty thwarts; And whose benificence no charge exhausts. Him blind antiquity profan'd, not serv❜d, With self-taught rites, and under various names, Female and male, Pomona, Pales, Pan, And Flora, and Vertumnus; peopling earth With tutelary goddesses and gods
That were not; and commending, as they would, To each some province, garden, field, or grove. But all are under one. One spirit-His
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding browsRules universal nature. Not a flow'r
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain, Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues, And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes, In grains as countless as the sea-side sands,
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